News & Notes: Clery Compliance, Campus Training, and AI Policy Updates
Andrea Stagg, Director of Consulting Services
& Emma Hempel, Regional Account Manager
This week, in News and Notes, our free webinar on The River Connect, we covered numerous topics affecting today’s civil rights professionals. If you couldn’t attend, no worries, here is an update:
1) CLERY
We acknowledged that it is peak Clery season, and if you haven’t started preparing for the Annual Security Report, now is the time. We know Title IX Coordinators and other equity professionals have varying roles in preparing the ASR but encourage everyone to have some hand in providing information and reconciling reports, where appropriate.
2) TRAINING
With orientation looming, or already begun in some places, we’re always thinking about onboarding and training strategies. Title VI is an important topic, but if we provide a training that is limited to Title VI, are we missing an opportunity to educate the campus community about other types of discrimination and harassment on other protected categories? Remember that Title IX doesn’t have a training requirement for students, but Clery does require that training is offered—primary prevention training and ongoing awareness campaigns. We recognize that we do some trainings because we’re required to by federal or state law (or even by contract or settlement), and some because we want to—it reflects our values. What steps can we take to harmonize our training so that folks don’t get training fatigue?
3) AI POLICY
We also talked about the uptick in the use of generative AI to draft formal complaints and other responses. Of course people have the right to use whatever tools are available to them for their personal correspondence and filings. Consider putting a page limit and formatting requirements (font size, spacing) on any written submissions to control for length. Remind parties that they are prohibited from putting case information received through the investigation process into generative AI—it’s akin to prohibited sharing, which should be addressed in your policy. And consider reminding parties that if they do use AI tools to support their writing, be sure to check it over. We know AI tools sometimes invent facts, and that’s an issue with the work that we do.
